Our Cordwood Masonry Home
Our cordwood masonry home — 1,200 square feet of walls laid up by hand over four summers — was the first real step toward self-reliant, mortgage-free living. From a distance, visitors mistake the walls for stone, until they touch them and feel the warm texture of wood. Beyond the beauty, cordwood pairs an R-20 wall with serious thermal mass, holding temperature steady through hard seasons, and can cut conventional build costs by roughly half if you’re willing to do the work yourself. This is where the homestead — and the whole story — began.